


November Rain

by OnyourRadar



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Angst, Deals with grieving, Eliott is super supportive, Love, Love at First Sight, Lucas grieves, M/M, Mentions of Mental Disorder, Minor Character Death, Relationship is good, Strangers to Lovers, supportive boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28051815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyourRadar/pseuds/OnyourRadar
Summary: Eliott finds his eyes burning from holding back. He can repeat his words, he can shout them from rooftops, tell them to Lucas everyday.But the process of healing won't  start until Lucas sheds his guilt...—or—A story of grieving and how support looks different for everyone.
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 16
Kudos: 82





	November Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Tenses are all fucked up. Don't think too much about. Done purposefully.

The first time Eliott meets Lucas he thinks, _now is not the time to fall in love._ Next to the overwhelming feeling of an ache in his chest and a want to dispel the sadness he witnessed that day, Eliott remembers the cobblestones the most. Or at least it is what he tells himself to forget the mournful bite of blue eyes so haunting he doesn't know if he'd ever shake the memory of them.

Grey stone, glistened and slippery wet from an oppressive mist that, when he thinks of it, was the perfect kind of weather that billowed with sadness for lowering a casket into the ground.

His steps echoed something solid and worked in synchronization with his mother who stood by his side dabbing a cloth at her bare face. She stood tall against her grief and Eliott had to divert his gaze, not used to seeing her feelings laid out in the open so candidly. 

Black tie and a stuffy suit. Black cars all in a line. But Eliott focused on cobblestone. On cracks that acted like carved lines of time, orange and red leaves that stuck and unstuck with gusts of wind. 

  
  


He never felt like he should have attended that day— he didn't know Lucas and he definitely never met Mrs. Lallemant, but at his mother's insistence he acquiesced. 

"He'll need a friend." 

But Eliott was barely a neighbor, let alone a friend. Still he nodded his head and donned his finest. 

They had missed the morning service and decided to join the procession. It was slow and he offered to drive seeing how she was barely able to see past the tears. 

Sometimes he thinks of the steady clicking of the turn signals and how it sounded much like heels on the pathway that wound and weaved between old and worn tombstones. 

A simple one marked Mrs. Lallemant's spot among the souls. It was a small crowd and there next to Mr. Lallement was the hunched form of a boy he wish he knew. 

Hair untamed and face solemn. Blue eyes dry as he stared down at a coffin that housed the still form of his mother. 

Eliott thought Lucas looked devastating. Sixteen and already broken by loss. Eliott had to look away from such a sight, gave Lucas proper privacy to mourn and when it came time for Eliott to drop his white chrysanthemum into the grave he remained rooted. His mother moved without him. 

And before the dirt finished piling and the last of the sermons were being sung, condolences being offered one after the other, Eliott had walked away from the crowd. 

"I'll be around. Take your time, mom." He promised not to go far. But the cobblestone path took him behind an abandoned church at the base of the hill where they held the service. 

He'd seen Lucas run off the moment the crowd started to convene and something in seeing that stiff body walk away made him want to give chase. So he had. 

And what he found was perhaps the saddest and most lasting effect of the death itself.Lucas hidden behind the stone walls of an abandoned church with the curl of mist around his body like a broken hug. His fingers clenched in the dirt and leaves in the burned shades of red and orange and a fire tinged yellow making home between the spaces between his fingers. 

Eliott, tall even then, ducked a fallen branch and when he got close Lucas snapped those blue eyes all red rimmed and sorrowful towards him. 

He found it hard to hold the gaze of someone living a tragedy. So he didn't. But seared into his memory was the image of him. Blue eyes wide, tears a steady drip and nose red tipped. 

The heavy weight of guilt was a clear splash on Lucas' face. 

Guilty of what? Eliott hadn't been sure. He wonders if he wasn't too afraid to ask back then, maybe things would have turned out differently.

Maybe the weight of guilt wouldn't have stayed, lingered, aged and controlled Lucas' so tightly in the subsequent years that followed this meeting if Eliott had simply asked,  _ what is wrong _ ?

That day Eliott had been struck with the thought of, what _ if I held him.  _

Would Lucas have felt a comfort? Eliott never found out. He got close. Kneeled and crawled, felt the wetness seeped into the fabrics of his suit.

Close enough to where those eyes weren't muted by distance. Where he bore witness to this stranger and his way of grieving. Eliott held out his flower in an offer of condolensces and Lucas slowly accepted. 

Took the stem and held it with delicate fingers and held it towards his face. The curl of petals had caught the spilled tears as it kissed Lucas' chin. 

"I always found it odd to leave flowers for the dead when the living need the comfort more." 

Eliott had broken the silence awkwardly. The only answer he'd been given were sniffled breathing, a fresh wave of new tears, and the dangerous wobble of lips. 

"I'm sorry." He told Lucas. A blanket statement of  _ I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry that you're crying. I'm sorry that it hurts so much.  _

_ I'm sorry that I can't take it away. _

The day waited for the both of them, Lucas who hadn't spoken a word and Eliott who felt like he could sit there forever. 

But Eliott didn't sit forever. He didn't speak those words or hug Lucas simply because Lucas looked like he needed it. 

He bowed out and gave a little wave before he made his way up that cobblestone path. Something felt wrong as he walked away. 

He found that it was because it would be the last time he'd see Lucas for years to come. 

He caught his mother ranting and raving over a glass of wine to his father about that horrible man who,

"—runs off with another lady before her body even cools in the ground."

Eliott expects to never see Lucas again and somehow he manages to cut off that longing feeling inside him but he can't stem the thought that he should have done more. 

Could have done more. 

It's a thought that had Eliott making his way up and down cobblestone once a month. He cleaned up cobwebs and brushed away the dead leaves. 

Left flowers untouched and kissing the earth. 

"He'd be here if he could, ma'am."

His one sided conversations were his secret till the day he found fresh chrysanthemums arranged neatly at the base of the tombstone. A touch that wasn't his. 

It was laid out with a care that was so precise, it had Eliott looking all around him in the emptiness of a graveyard in hopes of catching those blue eyes. He looks down at the church, still in disrepair. 

The second time he met Lucas it was two years after the first time, but this time there were no crowds or suits. Just the two of them, the frozen ground and early December's crisp air. The shorter brunette remained an image that stole Eliott's breath. 

He stood, his back against the stone wall, one arm tucked behind and the other gripping loosely at the stem of a white chrysanthemum. 

Lucas had his head turned, blues eyes waiting like he knew Eliott would show up. 

He looked warm in a grey scarf. 

Eliott, like two years before wants to say so much. And like two years ago he says so little.

Like roles reversed Lucas offers up the flower on their second meeting and Eliott accepts. 

"Thank you. For taking care of her."  _ When I couldn't. When you didn't have to.  _

Eliott shakes his head. 

"I didn't do anything." Because caring for the dead took little effort. Especially if they weren't yours to begin with. 

With a particularly strong gust of wind comes an invitation to come home with him. 

"I'm sure my mother would love to see you." 

Because Eliott wasn't ready to let Lucas go, wasn't ready to part ways but he had no other reason for the other boy to want to remain. 

To his relief Lucas simply smiles and nods. He leads the way up the stone pathway. Their shoes skipping over cracks, side by side. When they pass Mrs. Lallemant's grave Lucas doesn't pause to look and Eliott gives a silent tip of his head. Holds onto his lone flower just a little tighter. 

He comes to realize perhaps he was just in need of flowers of his own these past two years. He hopes she doesn't fault him for keeping it for himself. 

They get home just a little before his mother does and Eliott lets Lucas shower first and lends him a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt that hangs off his smaller frame.

His mind wanders, questioning what exactly was he doing, with a boy he barely knew. If anything, Eliott has more intimate knowledge of the grave he tended to for two years. 

But when Lucas comes out of the shower, towel hanging around his neck and face flushed from warmth, Eliott thinks he made the right decision. 

When his mother comes home she is surprised to see them both. Shocked even, as her mouth drops open but she is quick to put on some tea. 

Eliott watches as she fusses and Lucas grows demure, almost shy as he takes the offered mug. They talk in quiet whispers as Eliott looks on like an interloper. But he feels almost guilty as he intervenes while his mother looks at Lucas with wet eyes.

"Mom," Eliott calls out. "I'll show Lucas where he's staying for the night." 

"Right, of course, just— we'll catch up in the morning. You boys get some rest."

Eliott leads Lucas upstairs. There is something almost intimate at the sound of their feet shuffling on the stairs. 

"Make yourself comfortable." 

He offers his bed but it sounds like he is offering his world. Something in him is perfectly fine with this notion. He hopes Lucas accepts. 

Because somehow the scene is just right, like it was meant to be. Lucas looks natural sitting there on his bed. 

"Where will you sleep?" Lucas asks, looking around the room. 

Eliott wonders what he gleams from the random knick knacks on his shelves. His mismatched books; all worn for overuse and time. 

Does this little look into his life make Lucas long to have known him, well before a fated funeral and two years lost. 

"I'll take the couch."

Lucas looks at the bed, contemplative, before he looks back up at Eliott. 

"It's big enough." He pats the comforter, welcoming. 

"It's oka—"

"Please. Stay. "

Something in the way he asks makes Eliott think back to the first day. Behind that abandoned church with fingers holding a chrysanthemum like it was his saving grace. Like those words are the ones he wish he had had spoken back then. To keep Eliott from walking away. 

"...okay."

He finds himself lying on his side, staring at Lucas and Lucas staring at him. Their noses brush the slightest and he finds sleep to be a hard thing to come by in presence of the other. 

" I'm eighteen." Lucas whispers into the night like it holds all the answers. And all Eliott hears is that Lucas is here to stay. 

"He can't take me away this time."  _ I want to get to know you.  _

Eliott wants that too. He wants Lucas to hear him loud and clear.

_ I wish I knew you before, I could have loved you for all these years. _

The message settles an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He doesn't know, yet, what it means for him but he accepts it as it comes. 

It makes him feel that things will be okay. Like he can face any low and any high.

Lucas moves in closer and tucks himself against Eliott's chest, ducks until he rests comfortably below Eliott's chin.

In the morning when he wakes it is to Lucas' hair tickling his nose. A numbness that travels all up and down the arm lies under Lucas' still form.

Light of the morning danced all around him and the silence was broken by tiny little huffs of breathing that spills from parted lips. 

Lucas sleeps like he is comfortable. 

Eliott isn't sure what divine intervention has given him this momentary peace but he is afraid that if he breathes loud enough that feeling would leave him. 

And he's trying to hold on. 

"I can hear your thinking." 

Eliott smiles at the sound that breaks the silence. Fitting. 

Lucas unfurls from his side. Blooms like a flower waking in the morning. 

Lucas yawns, eyes and nose scrunching and really it shouldn't be a sight but Eliott wonders what it'd be like to wake to it every morning. 

"What's going on up here?" Lucas asks as he shifts till he is looking down at Eliott and Eliott is looking back up at him, entranced. Thin fingers knocks at the side of his head gentle, like a request to, 

_ "Let me in."  _

"That I like this," Eliott admits. "A lot." Too much. 

Lucas smiles down at him, like he knows a little secret that Eliott isn't privy to. There, hovering above him, Eliott sees a different Lucas. 

The Lucas from two years ago— Lucas from yesterday— is merely a shadow that  _ this  _ Lucas casts as an extension of himself. There still, always there, yet going unnoticed. 

  
  


But Eliott doesn't see it often. That side of Lucas. Time passes and Lucas holds himself in a way that all the fractures of his being are hidden from view despite how he becomes such an integral part of Eliott's day. 

"Good, I like this too… I'm not going anywhere." 

It's a promise that Lucas keeps physically. It starts with the way he rolls out of bed and follows Eliott downstairs. 

It was Lucas adamantly turning down the offer for him to take the spare room until he was situated with his own place. 

"Lucas, hun, you're never going to be a burden." 

Eliott wants to echo his mother. But he let's Lucas decide for himself. 

"I've already made plans to stay with an old friend, Mrs. Demaury. But I promise I'll be over quite regularly." 

He states this while staring at Eliott and something in the way he smiles has Eliott blushing under the scrutiny of Lucas and his own mother. 

It's a playful and soft side to Lucas that Eliott sees quite often. 

He sees it when Lucas reunites with his old friends. Sees it when Lucas spends Christmas with Eliott's family; eyes lit up at the amount of presents like he wasn't used to it. 

Almost unbearably awkward as he accepts the presents. He spends Christmas night in Eliott's bed whispering, 

"I feel silly." 

Lucas plays with the string of his hoodie as he shifts, getting comfortable as he sits back against Eliott's chest. 

The touching and cuddling is new. 

"I'm sorry I didn't have any presents for anyone." 

"There's always next year." He mumbles almost wistfully. 

Eliott settles for dropping a kiss on the top of Lucas' head when he wants to twist the other boy in his arm and kiss away the apology. But kissing is new. 

All of it is new. Barely a month and Eliott feels like being with Lucas is a blip in forever where everything they've experienced is new. 

New like how, Lucas is bashful, almost shy around Eliott's family but come New Year's, Lucas laughs with his head thrown back. He toasts and jokes like there is no burden. 

Unreal in the way he led Eliott down the hall in the midst of a party, eyes sparkling with mirth and an emotion Eliott couldn't name. Lucas giggled as he nearly tripped on his own two feet. The little hiccup didn't stop him from dragging Eliott into his bedroom and closing the door behind the both of them. 

In drunken stupor, Lucas threw his arms around Eliott's shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss just as the muffled countdown reaches zero and Eliott goes with it willingly. 

He kissed back with a fevor that he didn't realize he was holding back. Between the nips of teeth and slick slide of tongue, Lucas pulls away breathing heavy and spoke words that laid bricks around the both of them. Built up something permanent.

"You're stuck with me Eliott Demaury. Always." 

"I don't want to be without you, ever." He responded voice thick with what he thought might just be love. 

And always meant that Lucas was able to work through their issues without wanting to run away at first sight of them. 

It was handling the news that Eliott is bipolar and witnessing it but not shying away, even when he didn't quite know what to do. 

"You know something, my mother was schizophrenic," Lucas quietly admitted one day. He sat next to Eliott who had taken a little over a week to feel well enough to get out of bed. 

Lucas peeled an orange with nimble fingers and offered the wedges to Eliott, feeding him slowly. 

"It was different, of course. But there's one thing that is the same." 

"And what's that?" Eliott took the offered orange slice. Bitinto its flesh and something about it tasted sweeter. 

Went down easy. 

He looked at Lucas, who held the orange up for Eliott. A decrepit smile rested on rosy lips and Eliott remembered wanting to kiss it until it was real. Until Lucas couldn't feel anything but happy. 

"I'm still not sure if I'm doing anything right." 

The fear and self loathing offered Eliott a glimpse of that shadow. It surfaced with a vengeance that Eliott hadn't expected. 

He moved closer and took the slice offered to him between his lips. Pressed close until it was shared between them. The juice running down both their chins. 

When he pulled away, Lucas was right as rain. His smile soft around the edges, eyes hooded as he moved back in for another kiss.

Eliott met him halfway. Tried his best to tell Lucas he was doing just fine. Doing his best and it was more than enough. 

But the smile is a stain in his memory. Always there like an invisible veil cast over the both of them. Because Eliott feels utterly stuck without an answer of how to make things right for the shorter brunette. 

But he is aware that there is a sadness that lingers so deep in Lucas' being. One so different from his own that Eliott, try that as he may, won't be able to erase completely. 

He wants to ask,  _ what makes you so sad? Where does that whisper of guilt come from? _

But his answers come without having to ask. 

They pass summer in passionate heat. Lucas introduces Eliott to the wonders of hot sticky days spent lounging by the lake. Wet kisses and picnics like something out of a romance novel. 

Eliott teaches Lucas to never let him pack the basket even when he bribes him with searing kisses. 

By the time the leaves begin to turn, dusting sidewalks in an myriad of autumn colors, Eliott feels like something shifts. 

There is a dimness that settles in those baby blue eyes when the weather grows colder.

At the turn of October Lucas grows quiet, and the days seem lost on him. 

"Is everything okay?" Eliott hates that he asks this, because it is clear that is the last question he should ask. 

Hates even more when Lucas grows soft around the edges, eyes the familiar hooded as he utters,

"I'm fine." 

A mantra spoken out loud to convince himself that what he speaks is the truth and perhaps the feelings that linger, that shadow, was the lie. 

"You don't have to be." 

Fine. 

He doesn't have to be fine if he doesn't want to. And as if he was waiting for permission, Eliott watches as those shoulders drop and there is the tip of a chin. 

When Lucas drops a kiss on Eliott's lip, the warmth is tinged with a sorrow. 

Because every new day of November brings a different kind of sadness.

Eliott doesn't understand it fully until the anniversary of her death has them both standing silently next to her grave shivering from cold and barely protected from the steady drum of rain. 

"It was my fault you know?" 

Eliott barely manages to catch the words. But he does and the sound of it is layered with a guilt. 

Before he can stop himself he has Lucas in a hug— two arms wrapped around thin and shaking shoulders. 

It didn't matter how they stood drenched, the umbrella fallen and useless on the ground. Eliott holds Lucas, fingers clenched in his shirt. 

"It wasn't… it's not your fault." Eliott holds him tighter. 

He buries his face against the crook of his boyfriends neck. Doesn't want Lucas to see how his eyes clench and how he grits his teeth because there is an anger inside him brought on by the feeling of being lost. 

Because he doesn't know what to say and he doesn't know what to do in order to make things right. 

"Let's go home." Lucas said. His voice is steady and it forces Eliott to step back, eyes searching that face, hands coming up to clutch onto wet and cold cheeks. 

"It wasn't." Eliott repeats. 

The sentiment remains true even hours after theyve found themselves underneath the warmth of a comforter in Eliott's bed. 

"She was sick. Really sick— I should have been paying more attention." 

Shouldn't have left her alone when he was supposed to be with her, in case she need anything. 

"She said she was fine that I shouldn't worry. That it was just a cold, I-I should have just trusted myself. This could be a-all…"

Lucas stops talking, breath hitching, as the words remain stuck in his throat. His eyes are red rimmed, blue and clouded with tears. 

He cries like he is releasing everything that he's been holding in ever since his mother's death. Like the words he let fall from his lips just mere seconds ago were spoken for the first time. 

"I shouldn't have let her…"

"You were sixteen." Eliott said, adamantly. 

Eliott finds his eyes burning from holding back. He can repeat his words, he can shout them from rooftops, tell them to Lucas everyday. 

But the process of healing won't start until Lucas sheds his guilt but all Lucas can do is shed tears on certain days of the year when the feelings get too much to bare on his own. 

Eliott holds onto this Lucas a little differently from the way he normally holds onto him. There in bed, with Lucas grieving, Eliott holds on a little more desperately. Almost crushing in his fear that he is letting Lucas be consumed by his guilt. 

But holding onto Lucas, listening— it's all that he can do. Eliott knows that none of this would be resolved any time soon, but he makes a promise to be there. To let Lucas grieve but not break. 

"Everyone leaves Eliott, one way or another. And I'm scared that it's my fault."

Eliott holds on tighter. His lips stem the flow of tears on Lucas' face.

"I'll be here. For as long as I can be." He promises. He'll tell Lucas every day what he needs to hear if that is what it takes. 

"Will you leave?" Lucas asked. Looks up through wet lashes. His nose is red and his cheeks are dried and chafed from anconstant rubbing. 

Eliott shakes his head. 

"I don't know. But I don't want to." 

He feels like he said the right thing because the smile that Lucas gives him is genuine and light. 

"I love you." Lucas whispered. He burrows closer until his ear rests against Eliott's chest, as if he chases the beating of a heart. 

Eliott pulls the blanket tight around the both of them. 

"...I love you too."

Outside the rain hits the ground in a steady downpour, chilling the November air. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
